


nor are we forgiven

by fisherqueens



Category: Dead Space
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Dead Space 3, mentions of body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-16 00:19:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2248914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fisherqueens/pseuds/fisherqueens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they run, but they can't run quite far enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nor are we forgiven

A man says that the gods can laugh all they want.

He will still make his plans.

Whether they come to fruition or not is a murmur on dying wind. And gods only have so much control over the fate of men, as much as they would like to believe the opposite.

-

Either way, they escape what should have become their end. 

Not completely, but close enough at least.

Who’s laughing now?

-

Isaac is not a man of fate. He does not live for the whims of an invisible hand and he does not eat from the fruit of fortune, but knowledge and misery. To build is a beast of great burden, for fingers to itch and for his skull to crawl with motes of red dust and words imprinted upon the winding wrinkles of his brain. He breathes in and he breathes out and every other half breath is restraint. 

He tries not to become a man of the bottle (though being a man of the book seems a worse fate). Ellie discourages numbness, takes knuckles that feel too big for his skin, for his hands, and pulls him from the small table to the confines of their bed. It doesn't start like this. It starts with a ship hurtling towards a distant lunar colony, far away from the dust and debris of The Sprawl. They don't change their names, you don't have to in the ambiguity of space. No one has the time for background checks, and in truth, the only thing that matters is money. 

-

The first night is terrifying.

Isaac presses himself to the wall of the shower with the dim glow of his RIG, a sickly yellow in the space between the walls. Ellie basks in the spray of warm water, slides fingers over her grimed hair and takes care not to wet the makeshift cap over her eye.

(He'd cut the bottom of a bottle free from the body of it, affixing it carefully. They breathed the same air, laughed quietly in their own intimacy as he'd fixed it over her eye with some simple string and pressure.)

"You next," she says as the last of the soap hits the drain and she reaches out for his hands. His wounds are healing over slowly, the one in his hand more so than the one in his shoulder. The doctor they'd seen, streetside and cheap, no questions, just treatment for cash, had stitched it and wrapped it in plastic (there's only so much somatic gel can do without wrecking someone's brain) before sending them off. The same with his hand. "I can do it myself," he justifies, eying the door of the shower as if he might run.

"I know you can," she says, leaning down to pump soap into her hand from the dispenser, rubbing it slowly between her palms, feeling the drag of bubbles against her skin. Isaac's shoulders don't ease, so she moves forward and he breathes out, flinches when she presses hands against his belly without hesitance. 

"Ellie--"

She puts a finger against his lips, covered in soap.He concedes for the time being, to the soft motion of her hand against his stomach, moving steadily up his chest, down his shoulders, back up his neck. She feels him shake and Ellie wonders for all the time she'd spent on the Sprawl, what secrets he has beneath his skin, inside the marrow of his bones.

"You can't wash it off," he mumbles when she scrubs at his arms, tracks from needles apparent against his pulse and his elbows. 

"I can try," she murmurs.

-

They lay in bed, clean and quiet. There are clothes on the chairs by a table full of empty takeaway boxes and bottles of water. Pills and gauze and towels. Isaac is staring at the ceiling, mouthing words, brow furrowed deep over his ghosty blue eyes. Ellie's fingers creep slowly as she watches him, gradual little steps in inches over the line of his ribs, the cage of his heart. His good arm curls around her, bad hand resting on the wiry muscles of her body.

"What are you keeping from me?" she murmurs after a long moment of silence.

Isaac's eyes turn to her and his lips pause in mid-word, open with teeth and tongue awkwardly pressed together. He pulls them together.

"We can't have anymore secrets," she says and Isaac nods.

He rolls over and faces her. 

"Okay," he says gruffly. "No more secrets."

-

Isaac takes odd jobs under different names. He cannot be himself and it suits him just fine. He laughs at it. It's like being a child again. Ellie's own name bears no consequences. She suggests her surname one night over cheap take out and a cold drink and Isaac raises a brow and asks if she's hitting on him.

It's the most candid smile he's given her all week.

She shrugs her freckled shoulders and takes a long drought from her drink. 

"Mmmaybe."


End file.
